Hallowell Forest: A Slender Man Story
by KorroksApostle
Summary: The woods outside of the Rowans' house aren't as safe as they once were.


Hollowell Forest

A Slender Man Story

"Jacob! Jacob! Jacob! JAAACOB!" She screamed, ice filling her raw lungs with every gasp. Cruel jagged branches reached out in every direction from the darkness, grabbing, pinching, and scratching. Still, she kept running. Madly determined to keep pace. Snow was flung in every direction with every stumbling kick of a step.

Stephanie pushed forwards, her mind devoid all thought, save one, as she gave chase.

Her brother.

She had to find him, had to get to him. She could see it's shape ahead. That thing. That awful thing that took her brother away.

Beneath the snow a dried and dead root caught Stephanie's foot, throwing her to her hands and knees in a deep snow bank. She cried out at the raw sting of cold finally catching up to her, seeping through her stiff reddened fingers and soaked pajamas. She whipped her head up and pulled her hands from the snow, she choked on a gasp.

No. No. No!

She desperately searched the darkness for the shape, that towering form in the tree line.

Gone.

"NO!" she screamed aloud, "JACOB! Give him _back_! Give me my brother baaack!" She let out a long wail. Her hot tears burning her frozen red cheeks. She let out another sob and threw herself down punching the ground.

Suddenly long slim arms wrapped around her from behind.

Stephanie shrieked.

"Shhh! Steph! Shhh..." the small girl kept flailing to get free. She would not be taken. Warm hands stroked her hair as she was rocked back and forth.

"Steph, please." her mother cooed, "You have to stop this. Please stop. Shh. Shh. Shhh."

Recognition slowly dawned, "Mom?"

"Yeah, Baby. It's me." She kept rocking her daughter back and forth in the snow. Stephanie twisted in her mother's grasp and stared in to her eyes, desperate for her to understand.

"It was him That monster came back. The monster that took Jacob came back!" Another sob shook her frame, "I-I- I w-was going save him." She could feel her mother tense against her but said nothing.

An especially loud gust of wind howled through the dead forest. Stephanie shuttered and gripped her mother tightly.

"We need to go inside now, Steph." Her mother stood, but Stephanie just continued to sit there, staring at where she knew he had been, where he probably still was. Just lurking and waiting for something.

Her mother wrapped her arm around Stephanie's shoulder and walked her back to the house. Stephanie was surprised to see how far off the warm glow of the house sat. She had run further than she thought. She glanced back over her should at the nothingness, once more.

Their house stood alone with nothing but trees and deer as neighbors for miles. Getting to school took three dirt roads, a highway, and waking up at five-thirty for the bus. People said that was why Jacob "ran away". He couldn't stand this hillbilly life another minute. He'd always been a good boy, but everyone had seen the changes in him. And they all knew about his mother.

Mary Rowan, mother of two, caregiver of one shuffled her youngest through the still open back door. Mary slid the door shut behind her, twisting the little lock into place. She turned to her daughter who was still gazing out the glass doors, at something in the dark. Mary's eye's flitted between her daughter and outside. She sighed and dropped to a knee. Once again stroking her little girl's wet tresses from her face.

"Stephanie, Baby..." the girl continued to stare past her mother, "Steph, please talk to me. Why did you go out there? You know you don't go outside after dark. You could have gotten lost or attacked by an animal or..."

"I saw him again. I saw the monster that took Jacob-"

"Baby, nothing_ took _Jacob." Mary's eyes fell to the small puddle forming on the linoleum at her daughter's red bare feet, she could see scratches that would be scabs by the morning, "Jacob ran away." She said to the girl's feet, "He didn't want to be here anymore...so he left. You're- you're too old for this monster talk. You know monsters aren't real. They just don't exist. You're using this not to cope him leaving and..." She looked back into Stephanie's face, "I don't want to hear this monster talk anymore. Understood?"

"But _Mom_...!"

"No! I'm done. You're all I have left and I can't-" Mary took a deep breath, "Go take a bath, get warmed up. You'll catch your death, running around out there barefoot like-like like a damn fool!" She stood up to her full length, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

"Just go. We'll talk more, later." with that Mary turned away. Stephanie stood there a minute more before trudging out of the room. She glanced over her shoulder to see her mother picking up various bottles off the counter. After a moment she finally seemed to find one with something still in it. She tipped the bottle to her lips, downing whatever was in it. Stephanie looked away.

Upstairs Stephanie turned the H nob and let their ancient claw-footed tub fill with steaming water. She looked around the room, old tile and pealing paint with a pattern of anchors and ships. The mirror was cracked and dulled, the light-bulb exposed. Over the toilet was a small window with proud crowing roosters on the stained curtains.

Stephanie gritted her teeth. He was real. She knew it. They were all treating her like she was dumb, as if she couldn't handle with the idea of her brother leaving. But the truth was Jacob wouldn't have run away. Especially not without talking to her or taking her with him. Stephanie hugged her arms to her suddenly trembling frame. She knew what she'd seen that night and it was no runaway.

She stared toward the slowly fogging window. Yes, Jacob had been acting weird for a while. He hadn't been talking to her that much and it had been months since she heard him laugh, but he hadn't run away. Her mother had had to work a double, yet again so it was just the two of them that night. Stephanie had spent most of the evening at the kitchen table, she'd had a huge report on plant cells due that week and nobody took plant biology more seriously than Hallowell Elementary's fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Birch.

Jacob was up in his room when she heard the crash from above. Stephanie had jumped at the sound but waited.

"JACOB?" she'd called out and waited.

No response.

Stephanie pushed back the chair, leaving her cell without bothering to label the nucleus. She was half way up the creaking wooden stairs when she saw Jacob. He looked so pale in that moment.

"Ja-" she started but he just walked past her, as if he hadn't heard or even seen her. He clomped down the stairs heavily. Stephanie stood on the stair for a moment confused. She looked down to her brother who had disappeared into the kitchen, then back up where she could see a blue light coming from his room. Stephanie crept the rest of the way up the stairs and stood in the open doorway of his room. His desk sat against the wall opposite of the door, his computer directly in front of the window. Stephanie shuffled into the room slowly walking over to his computer and picking up his over turned chair.

"That explains the bang." she said aloud, when something caught her eye outside. Jacob walked slowly, heavily across their dead lawn, towards the thicket of trees beyond. Stephanie screwed up her brow. What was he doing? She looked beyond him to the trees. She caught sight of something for a moment. A shiny bald head, if she wasn't mistaken. Or it could have just been a trick of the light.

Jacob was already at the tree line. Panic welled up inside of Stephanie that she couldn't explain. She could hardly breathe. Fear overtaking her and she couldn't even rationalize why.

"Jacob!" she screamed suddenly, a pain shooting through her heart. Stephanie sprinted from the teenager's room, taking the steps two at a time, she whipped around the end of the banister and dashed through the kitchen, leaping over empty glass bottles littering the room. She threw herself out the open back door. Dead grass scratched her ankles above her socks, but she paid no mind.

"JAY!" She screamed, standing at the edge of the woods. She jerked her head around trying to see in the dark. He couldn't have gotten far, she was only a moment behind him. But he was gone. She couldn't explain it but she knew he was completely gone. But she wasn't alone. Stephanie's chest constricted in terror. She backed up a step at a time until was inside the house. She'd found herself running until she reached her mom's empty bedroom. The girl had scrambled under the bed and stayed there until her mom had finally returned home.

Stephanie stopped biting her lip. She would never forgive herself for running away. Jacob was gone and nobody was looking for him. She reached down and twisted off the tap. The mismatched bathroom's air thick with steam. She glanced at the window. She had seen that _thing_ twice since that night. It hung back so she could never get a good look at it. It almost looked like a man. But she knew it wasn't.

It had never been so close before, though. That night, she'd been standing in the kitchen, getting a glass of water when she'd spotted it just beyond the tree line. It was taunting her. She just knew it had to be. But she had to try anyway. She'd do whatever it took to get her brother back and with that thought, she reached over the toilet and tugged the curtains firmly shut.


End file.
